“right”

Gay.
This is a word that seems to unite religious people of all backgrounds around the world.
It also drives a knee jerk reaction, causing them to panic, babble incoherently, or simply pretend the word doesn’t exist.
I’ve been asked to explain the Orthodox Jewish response to homosexuality, and while I’m not going to panic or babble, I [...]

“Two Jews, three opinions,” is a cliché. It’s also a gross understatement.
The ease with which a blog can be set up combined with my people’s natural tendency to debate anything, means that there is now a cornucopia of Jewish Australian opinion available online.
Left and right, centre and periphery, religious and secular, Zionist and anti-Zionist – [...]

In the current debate surrounding the Australian passports used in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai, there are two equally unsound positions.
Firstly, there’s the shrill (if exultant) Anti-Zionist response, that often tips over into outright racism. (see readers comments at the end of the stories)
On the other side, Jewish Australian leadership still hasn’t managed [...]

I’ve written before about the story of my paternal grandmother’s Holocaust survival. In short, her father, a religious Jew, made friends with the local priest long before the catastrophic events that wiped out Polish Jewry.
As Jews from my family’s village were packed off to the concentration camps, this priest managed to forge papers for my [...]

Dvir Abramovich was at it again.
Yet another piece about how Jews and the Holocaust don’t get the respect they deserve.
Yet more responses from puzzelled or angry non-Jews.
Yet another attempt by me to demonstrate to non-Jews that Jews who cry wolf regarding anti-Semitism are not representative of the community as a whole.
Even I’m bored…
Or I would [...]

Today’s morning session of the conference was something of a revelation.
One of the highlights of this conference was meeting a young woman who is part of the Muslim roof body.
Did you know the Muslim community has been having many similar debates to us regarding roof bodies and representation?
Did you know that they had their own [...]

No prize for guessing what the attitude was of the 150 or so attendees at the talk by the Age’s Editor- in- Chief, Paul Ramadge, to the Plenum of the JCCV (Jewish Community Council of Victoria) on Monday night. He was the ‘roo’ in the spotlight, feeling the heat as they flung repeated accusations of pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic editorial/journalistic bias as their reasons for cancellations of their Age subscriptions. They were already indignant and vexed before being well cued by John Searle (President of the JCCV) and Danny Lamm (President of the ZCV) who led Ramadge deftly into firing range. Searle cracked the old joke about ‘ journos not allowing the facts to get in the way of a good story’ as a tone-setting standard.

On Monday night, the JCCV held a plenum, preceded by an address from The Age Editor-in-Chief, Paul Ramadge, and it seemed prudent to attend.
Among certain expected elements, there were also a few surprises. The plenum itself was run with consummate efficiency by JCCV President, John Searle.
I’d been bracing myself for an excruciating, anarchic talkfest that [...]

Not long after this blog began in May, a phenomenon emerged: some of the more interesting developments began to take place either via email, or offline altogether.

After having lived away from the community – both in Australia and overseas – for ten years, I began reconnecting with Jews from the various sub-communities, and from different generations.

This was both a refresher course (some things hadn’t changed) and a steep learning curve, as I navigated through the labyrinthine arcana of communal politics and caught up on developments among the younger generations.

Since returning from the hiatus and outing myself in early August, blog-related activity offline has become even more frenetic. Being “out” has given me the opportunity to meet numerous people, and some of the more inspiring and exciting developments seem to be coming from Generations X and Y.

This piece was originally published in The AJN in September.
In February, I received an email that had gone viral in Melbourne’s Jewish community. It claimed that owners of a Caulfield-area restaurant were anti-Semites and urged readers to boycott it. On the one hand, something in the email’s tone aroused my suspicion. On the other, I [...]